Biz & IT —

Savvysoft cries uncle: “TurboExcel” now “Calc4Web”

A small New York City software company gives up trying to milk Microsoft and …

The Excel money grab is over, and while Savvysoft didn't haul in Lindows money, it sounds like they did just fine by Microsoft—perhaps better than they deserved to. It's hard to tell for sure, since neither 'Softs are speaking about the dollars behind the settlement reached in the matter of Savvysoft's "TurboExcel" product. Shortly after TurboExcel was introduced in June 2004, Microsoft asked the New York City-based software company to change the name, for obvious reasons. Except that apparently, even though Microsoft introduced Excel in 1985, it had never gotten around to trademarking it... until April 2004, just as Savvysoft was getting TurboExcel ready for market. Clever Savvysoft sees an opening!

Savvysoft founder Rich Tanenbaum said in November 2004: "Before naming our product, we checked pretty carefully on the use of the word Excel. To be honest, we don't know why Microsoft is singling us out." Right. Of course, maybe Tanenbaum had a point when he claimed Microsoft went after TurboExcel because TurboExcel converts all your tricked-out Excel worksheets to C++, which can then be run on Linux. Sounds like it might be a useful product.

In any event, Tanenbaum was apparently the only person unaware of common law trademark and spent the last three years searching for a sugar daddy to pay his court costs. According to the Associated Press: "Tanenbaum said he tried to find a backer to fight Microsoft's trademark claim in court, with hopes of sharing a lucrative settlement with a venture capital group or a Microsoft competitor such as Sun Microsystems Inc." Surprisingly, none were found.

In the end, however, "We kind of knew we were going to have to change the name," Tanenbaum said. When did they know that? My guess is right from the start. They could have named it Calc4Web from the beginning, but they would have missed all this fun, not to mention co-marketing on Microsoft's Office Marketplace web site and at industry conferences.